HD Playback on Catalyst

[SvenCRen]

I ran some HD content on a reletively new Catalyst server with v4 b119, 15,000RPM SCSI drive, X1600 Radeon card on newer MAC Pro and I was very disappointed with its performace. One layer would play back at 25fps somewhat smooth with occasional glitches but add a second and the performance plummetted.

Granded this was stock footage at 1920 x 1080 that I have not tried to recompress but I figured that one layer should be able to play back with no loss at all.

Is this just a matter of how I have to compress the content or is there a larger issue at hand?

Thanks
Scott Riley

[ryanww]

Out of curiosity, were you only running that content out of the first display? like one output on one layer? Were you doing any scaling or any other effects other then just playing the file?

I have a show coming up where they are planning on doing this.. so I need to make sure that it can play this kind of file..
Thanks, Ryan

[Spam Butterfly]

Photo-Jpeg @ 50% is usually pretty reliable for this sort of thing.

[samsc]

I ran some HD content on a reletively new Catalyst server with v4 b119, 15,000RPM SCSI drive, X1600 Radeon card on newer MAC Pro and I was very disappointed with its performace. One layer would play back at 25fps somewhat smooth with occasional glitches but add a second and the performance plummetted.

Granded this was stock footage at 1920 x 1080 that I have not tried to recompress but I figured that one layer should be able to play back with no loss at all.

Is this just a matter of how I have to compress the content or is there a larger issue at hand?

Thanks
Scott Riley

scott what codec did you use?

did you use the stuff that came in the box?

if you did it is unlikely to work well.

typically the stock content people ship stuff which is does not play back well even for a single layer.

and with hi-def you have to be very very careful with data rates as well.

[samsc]

I have a show coming up where they are planning on doing this.. so I need to make sure that it can play this kind of file..
Thanks, Ryan

which computer?

[ryanww]

It will be running it on a mac book pro.. I have a 2ghz intel and 2 gigs ram.. Not sure what hard drive I am going to get yet though.

I downloaded one of the ones off of apples site in their gallery, and at first in the standard codec it would force close cat every time I scanned for the file. But I changed it to the photojpeg 50% and it ran fine. It ran at 25fps just off my laptop hd. It would just be a 5 minute HD clip, unknown resolution other then being told "it is in high definition". I am not planning on running any other effects other then positioning it on the screen properly.

My other question is when I play a movie, and have the volume all the way up, where does the audio go? Is there a place I set it to the destination? It is not coming out the speakers/headphone port and I can't find where to select that.

Ryan

[samsc]

ock footage at 1920 x 1080 that I have not tried to recompress but I figured that one layer should be able to play back with no loss at all.

On my digital juice HD jumpback DVD - the movie format is PNG.

This is a still image format -

not a very useful format for playing back.

not sure why you just expect this stuff to work - it doesnt.

I do the best i possibly can with whats available.

You can even do uncompressed video if you can get 200MB/s second from a raid system - but you cant get 200MB/s from a single scsi disc.

[samsc]

It will be running it on a mac book pro.. I have a 2ghz intel and 2 gigs ram.. Not sure what hard drive I am going to get yet though.

I downloaded one of the ones off of apples site in their gallery, and at first in the standard codec it would force close cat every time I scanned for the file. But I changed it to the photojpeg 50% and it ran fine. It ran at 25fps just off my laptop hd. It would just be a 5 minute HD clip, unknown resolution other then being told "it is in high definition". I am not planning on running any other effects other then positioning it on the screen properly.

My other question is when I play a movie, and have the volume all the way up, where does the audio go? Is there a place I set it to the destination? It is not coming out the speakers/headphone port and I can't find where to select that.

Ryan

apple internet codecs are designed for internet downloads and are for low bandwidth use. sure they play - but they arent designed for internet use.
Every codec has a specific use.
h264 h263 are for internet movies or conferencing.

After 4 years of continuous performance testing - photojpeg and dv codecs are still the best. 'Photo' does NOT mean its just for photos.
If something worked better i would say so.

---

Audio is routed via the sound preferences - out the default sound output.

[samsc]

I ran some HD content on a reletively new Catalyst server with v4 b119, 15,000RPM SCSI drive, X1600 Radeon card on newer MAC Pro and I was very disappointed with its performace. One layer would play back at 25fps somewhat smooth with occasional glitches but add a second and the performance plummetted.
Thanks
Scott Riley

I ran some test with a HD jumpback file at random playing back from a MTRON SSD - Quad intel 2.66GHz

I rendered out photjpeg files at different compression rates.
then tried to playback 2 layers-

The Raw File played at 11fps

photojpeg 40% 55-60fps
photojpeg 50% 55-60fps
photojpeg 60% 55-60
photojpeg 70% 55-60fps
photojpeg 80% 35-40fps

The reason why you need to test different compression rates in photojpeg is that movies vary hugely in their compression value depending on the content.
And the overall data rate of the movie is more important than the compression value.
You want to make hidef work you have to do some tests.

No other codec comes close to photojpeg.

[ryanww]

I tried going into the sound output, and only the internal speakers are selected as that is all my computer has.. I tried it again, and still no audio. I generated a little PDF report so you can take a look at it and see if anything in it might be able to determine the problem. I know my speakers aren't broken either.. The audio on the clip is AAC mono 16khz. Could it possibly be because I am running the demo version as I haven't purchased it yet?

Thanks,
Ryan